A snowstorm hits a small midwestern town on Christmas Eve, bringing together a group of high school students. They soon find their friendships and love lives colliding, and Christmas morning, nothing will be the same.
Based on the young adult fix-up book, Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances, by Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle, this new Netflix Christmas romantic-comedy is surprisingly palatable. In fact, this is potentially the lowest risk Christmas film, whilst simultaneously being the least Christmasy.
Let It Snow has an impressive young ensemble cast with Isabela Moner (Instant Family, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Transformers: The Last Knight), Kiernan Shipka (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Mad Men), Jacob Batalon (Marvel and Sony's Spider-Man franchise), Mitchell Hope (Descendants franchise), and Shameik Moore (the voice of Miles Morales in Sony's wildly popular Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). With a large array of characters, the film does have a high risk of spreading them too thin; an even higher probability when the film is only 92 minutes long.
Let It Snow doesn't get through the gauntlet unscathed. With three main story arcs, and the aforementioned young cast all having their own mini character development arcs, the film is over-encumbered, resulted in none of the storylines getting enough time to properly justify the character changes that occur. The story between Moner and Moore's characters has the best chance of them all, as it holds the largest amount of screentime, and yet it is the LGBT character and associated story that ends up stealing the show. Liv Hewson has the most grounded performance of everyone, as the Waffle Town waitress that likes girls.
The stories have been adapted and changed quite a fair bit from the source material, removing most of the "cheating" elements, and replacing them with "edgier" options; criminals, fighting, same-sex relationships, terminal illnesses, inclusive religious depictions, and a plethora of profanity. Despite a lot of elements that could bring a great deal of depth to a Christmas film, again, the number of events occurring means nothing gets the time it needs for anything to have full effect.
The narrative structure is all higgledy-piggledy, switching between the multiple storylines going on at once. Initially, the film feels impressive, that you get immersed in the story each time it pops up, to the point that when it changes to another character, you feel surprised as you forgot about them. It felt impressive because one could incorrectly assume that each story fragment is so engrossing that you forget about everything else that is going on, but the reality is a story so weak and shallow, that as soon as you look away, you forget that the characters exist.
The lack of screentime for each arc means a lot of the development and backstory has been either dumped on the audience through exposition or non-existent. Conflict born from spouted exposition with no prior hints of context, makes for an unsatisfying payoff in the end. The same can be said for unknown character backstory being the necessary cog to resolve conflict; a prime example of poor scriptwriting.
Through all of this, Let It Snow is still enjoyable. This youthful cast still cobbled together enough combined charisma to look past the pathetic excuse for a script, and their one-dimensional character traits are nothing if not relatable. If they had managed to limit the number of arcs or add another half an hour to the film to explore some of the facets in more depth, it would have had a much better level of engagement. Out of the entire cast, the standout performance comes from an adult. Joan Cusack, to be more specific, who is aptly credited as the "Tin Foil Woman". Her consistent concern and willingness to help, make her the most likeable character in the film.
There is definitely enough potential content here that Let It Snow would have worked better as a mini-series, keeping the main arcs separate. Through all of its faults, Let It Snow remains inoffensive with a happy ending, good pacing, and some comedic moments that work more often than they fail. It's edgier, more modern plot devices are certainly not well executed, but the attempt alone counts for something.